Geithner Book NYT Magazine

by Editor
May 12, 2014 at 8:49 am

https://www.smartertimes.com/1204/geithner-book-nyt-magazine

The Times magazine has a long cover story by Andrew Ross Sorkin about Timothy Geithner, timed to the release of Mr. Geithner's book Stress Test. I'll have a response elsewhere on some of the substance, but there are at least two journalistic points worth mentioning.

The first is Mr. Sorkin's reference to the Volcker Rule as "the widely popular regulation barring commercial banks from proprietary trading." No polling data is given as support for this claim. I doubt most people know what the Volcker Rule is. Plenty of people who do know what it is do not like it. And when one tells people who aren't sure what they think of the rule that it has an 850-page preamble, it may not be so popular. Mr. Sorkin seems so convinced of the Volcker Rule's popularity that he repeats the unsupported claim a second time, writing of Mr. Geithner, "when he had the chance to jump on popular issues, like the Volcker Rule, he declined."

The second journalistic point is a reference to Robert Rubin. The Times article says he "came up through Goldman Sachs and eventually joined the board of Citigroup, where he has been blamed in some circles for its taking on excessively risky debt that nearly caused the firm to collapse." I'm hardly a defender of Robert Rubin, but this is a journalistic cheap shot. Mr. Rubin gets no defense, and the Times doesn't give its own assessment, other than implicitly, of whether this blame is justified or falsely placed. We don't even learn who is doing the blaming, just a passive "has been blamed in some circles." Which circles? Andrew Ross Sorkin has been blamed in some circles for bad journalism, but I have a certain degree or respect for him because I think he works hard and isn't reflexively hostile to capitalism, so I would never write an article that said "Andrew Ross Sorkin has been blamed in some circles for bad journalism" without either giving his response or making clear that I don't entirely agree with those doing that blaming.

receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free smartertimes.com mailing list